A cartoon about semantics

With this cartoon I try to illustrate semantic with as little words as possible. The scenario is as follows.

A trading company has an electronic data format about deliveries of goods. A new partner joins the network with a different format.

For each of the symbols the data mapper needs to find out what they mean and how they translate between data formats.

In this example the data mapper is investigating what A means and how it translates. He thinks hard and remembers that A is the Date of sending the Delivery. By calling up his partner and explaining that he is looking for this Date he finds out that they call it B.

He takes the classic approach and creates a script that translates A to B.

One month later another partner joins with again a different data format. Again he thinks hard and finds out A and B are the Date of sending the Delivery.

Because he does not make the meaning clear the mapper has to rely on his memory and make many phone calls. This is clearly error prone and a tiring process.

In Collibra's approach the meaning of the symbols is made explicit. Instead of saying that A equals B, we say what A means and what B means. The translation between data formats can then be derived using this information.

Do not just keep the meaning in your head. Make it explicit and you will save time and many  headaches.

Disclaimer: I have very limited drawing skills, so I relied on what I could find online. The stick figures are by Thor, created in Omnigraffle.